Community Impact

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St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Dental Clinic: New
name and location, same exceptional care

The new Seton Dental Clinic is a bright
and cheery place for our patients to
receive dental care. With all-private
operatories, patient confidentiality and
comfort is also improved.

Ludella Robinson had avoided dental care for more years than she could
remember, not out of fear like some people, but because without a job
she simply did not have the resources to get care.

This is a common problem for many people in the city of Milwaukee. For
nearly ten years, Columbia St. Mary's (CSM) has provided an
answer to this need through its award-winning Madre Angela Dental Clinic
– Milwaukee’s “Dental Emergency Room for the Poor.”

In December 2009, with grants from the Daughters of Charity and the
State of Wisconsin, CSM and the Foundation took on a move, expansion and
renaming of the dental clinic. Now named the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
Dental Clinic – in honor of a beloved Daughter of Charity and the first
United States-born saint – the dental clinic’s new home on 13th
and Mitchell can accommodate double the number of patients it served at
its previous location.

Seton Dental Clinic's goal is to ensure access to its broad range of
oral health care – including urgent care, restorative care, dental
appliances, hygiene services and a school-based oral health program –
building its practice to more than 11,000 patient encounters each year.

The Seton Dental Clinic still provides the same exceptional care that
helped Ludella and others like her. But today, the expansion
allows dentists and staff to increase the number of patients they serve,
incorporate digital technology for treatment and recordkeeping and
utilize a dedicated space for community oral health education.

Ludella first learned about the dental clinic from CSM employees, where
she is being treated for breast cancer. "I knew I had a lump in my
breast, but I didn't have it examined until I got a free voucher for a
mammogram at CSM from an outreach nurse," she explains. Improving
Ludella's oral health was extremely important because any source of
infection can be a complication if cancer treatment causes the immune
system to be temporarily compromised.

This referral within our Community Benefits programming is a true
example of the care coordination that CSM strives to provide all people,
regardless of their ability to pay.

By the time of her initial visit to the dental clinic, Ludella was in
pain and needed significant work, including several fillings and the
extraction of six teeth. She jokes, "I got worried that I'd be without
my hair, because of the chemo, and without teeth. How would that look?
But they have taken molds for replacement teeth, thank goodness, and I
get to have a whole new mouth!"

Columbia St. Mary’s Foundation wishes to
thank the very generous and thoughtful
gifts provided for the move, expansion
and operations of the St. Elizabeth Ann
Seton Dental Clinic. Gifts totalling
$10,000 and more were provided by (July
1, 2007 - January 1, 2010):